This intriguing study is a product of one of the Media, Intelligence, and Network Design (MIND) Labs, a consortium of ten laboratories--four of which are in the US, two in Spain, one in the Netherlands, one in Portugal, one in Russia, and the lab that produced this report, in Finland. This study is part of MIND Labs’ ongoing project on the psychology of online gaming.

Several variables were measured during the playing of video games. It was hypothesized that playing games in the presence of friends would elicit stronger engagement than playing either with strangers or with a computer. The strength of response was measured by questionnaires that probed the feeling of spatial presence (how much the player felt as though he or she was actually in the game environment). Heart rate, skin responses, and facial expressions were also measured during play.

Ninety-nine undergraduates played two popular video games on Nintendo Game Boy Advance consoles. “Super Monkey Ball, Jr.” takes place in a nonthreatening colorful world with a cute little monkey, and is generally nonviolent. “Duke Nukem Advance” is a first-person shooter game in which the players have to kill off threatening aliens. Both games were played in both one-person and two-person versions.

The hypotheses stating that there would be stronger emotional and physiological responses when playing against a friend than either a stranger or a computer were confirmed. Playing against another person produced higher pregame anticipated threat ratings and higher postgame challenge ratings than playing against a computer. The feeling of being present in the game environments--the feeling of spatial presence--was greater when two humans were involved rather than when one human played against a computer. Playing against a friend produced stronger, though not always significant, measures of involvement than playing with a stranger.

The authors suggest that the study be replicated with the players in different rooms to see if the actual presence of the person in the room is a factor. Further, the authors’ contention that the results illustrated the benefits of playing games with other humans and especially with friends needs stronger evidence and more research. Although I found some of the conclusions to be a stretch, I look forward to reading more research results from the MIND Labs.